A persistent, hungry bear paid for its food-gathering efforts with its life when it was destroyed in Kananaskis.
Conservation officers killed the young male black bear about 9:30 p.m. Monday night during its fourth visit to a military camp about 2 km north of Kananaskis Village, where the Group of Eight leaders were meeting.
"The bear had come into the campground four times in just seven hours," said Susan McManus of Alberta's Sustainable Resources Department.
"Earlier aversion tactics -- bear dogs, rubber bullets and bean bag bullets parently didn't convince the bear to stay away."
On the bear's last visit to the campground, it climbed high up a tree to get at a cache of food tied on a rope between two trees.
"Conservation officers used what they call a 'firecracker bullet' to get it down," McManus said.
The noise of the explosion apparently startled the bear, which then lost its footing in the tree and plummeted to the ground.
"The bear was seriously hurt and had to be destroyed," McManus said.
"This is kind of a freakish thing for the bear to actually fall out of a tree and having to put it down," McManus said.
"But when it's in misery, you have to do the responsible thing."
The death of the bear infuriated environmentalists.
They say other bears could die because they are being repeatedly chased through Kananaskis Country by "bear squads" -- conservation officers who scare bears with rubber bullets, noise-makers and the dogs -- to protect the soldiers guarding the G-8 summit.
"These mountain parks are the stronghold for this species, and the last thing we need is the bear population being upset or harassed," said Cliff Wallis of the Alberta Wilderness Association.
"This is exactly why we suggested that the G-8 summit and other meetings not be held in protected areas."
Campers are routinely urged to keep food in trees rather than on the ground to prevent bears from smelling it.
For 10 days, conservation officers have been chasing eight bears a day near the Kananaskis Village and around the nearby military camps.
Brian Horejsi, a Calgary wildlife scientist who studies bears, said he blames "incompetent" summit organizers, particularly those who had assured the public wildlife would be protected and because they didn't wrap an electrical fence around the military camp to keep bears away.
"What I'm really irritated about is that these so-called environmental advisers that they've got were supposed to separate wildlife from this intense human activity from the G-8," Horejsi said.
"I'm not going to absolve them of this responsibility."
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